Graphic life narratives, especially memoirs, diaries, and auto/biographies in the form of comics, have flourished over the three decades since the landmark publication of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. As a distinct field that combines life narrative studies and comics studies, graphic life narrative scholarship has gravitated towards texts that visualize stories of the self in relation to memory, history, trauma, and reconciliation within familial, cultural, and national contexts. This special issue seeks to expand the scope of graphic life narrative studies to consider how migration, exile, and diaspora are prominent experiences in print and digital auto/biographical comics.

We invite submissions on graphic life narratives from both traditional centers of comics production (North America, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Japan) and from under-studied regions (e.g. the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South America, South Asia, the Caribbean). We are especially interested in submissions that take up issues of form as well as content within the transcultural contexts of graphic life narratives about migration, exile, and diaspora.

Some questions this issue may consider:

How can cartoonists mobilize the visual-verbal form of comics to represent experiences of forced and voluntary movement in their own lives and the lives of others?

How do graphic life narratives of migration, exile, and diaspora contend with memory, trauma, history, and survival in individual lives and across generations?

What visual tropes, techniques, and traditions are emerging in migration, exile, and diasporic graphic life narratives? How can comics accommodate transcultural life experiences visually?

How does the visual-verbal form engage the reader’s and/or the cartoonist’s sense of responsibility to bear witness to political and personal crises that have prompted the mass movement and displacement of peoples across borders?

Include a coversheet with your name and contact details with a 50 word bio. Authors must also include a fifty-word abstract and two to four keywords with their submissions. Essays should be 6,000-8,000 words including citations. Citations should be in the Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition.

This journal supports the inclusion of both black & white and color images and publishes ancillary digital and multimedia texts on the journal’s Routledge website. Inquiries welcome.

Images with captions must be submitted in a separate file as 300 dpi (or higher) tif files. It is the author’s responsibility to secure any necessary copyright permissions and essays may not progress into the publication stage without written proof of right to reprint.

All essays submitted for the special issue, but not selected, will be considered general submissions and may be selected for publication. Inquiries welcome. Submissions are due October 1, 2018.